Study Excursion of Archival School Marburg

As integral part of their studies, 45 future archivists at the Marburg-based Archival School have taken part in a guided tour through the archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen today. The students took advantage of the two-hours round to gain a survey of the diversity of the documents.

School Director Professor Dr. Rainer Polley emphasized the importance of the students’ going and seeing as many archives as possible in the course of their studies. “ITS with its valuable documents is of utmost relevance for the students. We use our visit here to take a closer look at the wide variety of the documents, their arrangement and preservation, the use made of them and the legal basis of that use.“

In preparation of the students’ visit, ITS archivist Karsten Kühnel had given a talk on the archives of the International Tracing Service at the Hessian State Archive in Marburg last week. In his lecture, he had directed the attention of his audience to the exceptional structure of the documents’ collection in the ITS archive. Over the course of more than 60 years, this structure had been adjusted to the needs of a tracing service reuniting families and clearing up individuals’ fates. “ITS is gradually developing into an academic archive. The process of describing the documents in conformity with archivist criteria will take some time“, so Kühnel.